History of Iran “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago, early Bronze Age, Kerman Province, in south-central Iran (854 mi) south of Tehran. The proposition of grouping these sites as an “independent Bronze Age civilization with its own architecture and language”, intermediate between Elam to the west and the Indus Valley Civilization to the east, is due to Yusef Majidzadeh, head of the archaeological excavation team in Jiroft. With Jiroft’s heyday ranging from around 4,500 to 4,200 years ago with a writing system evidenced in Tan inscription, that was carved on a brick whose lower left corner was the only part that had remained, in two lines seem to possibly belong to Elamite script. Archeologists have found many artefacts confirming the existence of a rich civilization with a temple and the sites where the tablets are found dating back to the third millennium BC. There is some belief that the inscription is the most ancient script found so far and that the Elamite written language could possibly even originated in Jiroft, where the writing system may have developed first and was then spread across the country. ref Elam, dating to around 4,700 to 2,539 years ago, was an ancient pre-Iranian civilization centred in the far West and Southwest of Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. Its culture played a crucial role during the Persian Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded Elam, when the Elamite language remained among those in official use. Elamite is generally considered a language isolate unrelated to the much later arriving Persian...